Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
This is total horseshit. Martinook breaks his stick slashing Matthews. Buddy just blatantly pushes the net off right in front of the ref.
Seriously. They’re not even pretending anymore.
That’s trash defense – the Leafs absolutely suck tonight – but Stolarz has let in at least 2 very soft goals and that third was poor down low coverage on his part. When Stollie is on, he’s down hard to the ice – not all spidery and leaving gaps everywhere.
Stolarz has been pretty weak to start this season. I’d expect any NHL goalie on their game to make both of those stops.
Let’s face a truth here. His current pace is to start 65 games. Before this season the most he has started was 34. He might just be playing too much.
It’s his 12th start in a month, so I can see some of that, but he’s just been inconsistent overall. Like take his games this year on a game-by-game basis and look at his GSAx in each game:
Montreal (W, 5-2): +1.95 (+1.71 at 5v5)
Red Wings (L, 6-3): -2.2 (-0.5 at 5v5)
Red Wings (L, 3-2): -0.6 (-1 at 5v5)
Rangers (W, 2-1): +2.4 (+0.84 at 5v5)
Seattle (L, 4-3): -1.9 (-0.6 at 5v5)
Jersey (L, 5-2): -1.4 (-1.2 at 5v5)
Buffalo (L, 5-3): -2.5 (-2.2 at 5v5)
Calgary (W, 4-3): +0.72 (-0.2 at 5v5)
Flyers (W, 5-2): +1.78 (+1.08 at 5v5)
Penguins (W, 4-3): +0.33 (+0.17 at 5v5)
Utah (W, 5-3): -1.3 (-1.7 at 5v5)Lots of hockey left tonight, but so far he’s -0.86.
He’s just very up and down and moment to moment is inconsistent. The numbers are there because they back up how I _feel_ in general when I’ve been watching him.
Stolarz has been pretty weak to start this season. I’d expect any NHL goalie on their game to make both of those stops.
So this site still has problems with you quote something quoted and you still need to edit your post before you can post or it just mysteriously vanishes?
Have there been any fixes over the summer? Are people still just . . .dealing with this and posting here because this at this point it’s not particularly impressive for a message board to have this many bugs.
I wonder how many people were upset that OJ was never put back on the NFL broadcasts after he was acquitted.
If he can come in and solidify the 4th line, then, by all means. Size and toughness is required to get through Florida. Some may say, the Leafs are ignoring other Atlantic Division contenders and think it’s foolish. Florida has been to the Finals 3 years in a row and they aren’t slowing down. It’s imperative that the Leafs lock down home ice in the first round. Florida, Tampa, Montreal, and Ottawa are all tough teams to play against. The Leafs could finish first again, with less points and still be a better team than last year.
its just 3.25 for a 4th liner? if thats what he is
thats wack
If he stays as a 4th liner, then he’s overpaid – but he works his way to the 3rd line where he was headed, it’s a decent salary for what he can provide – 15 goals, 250 hits, draws more penalties than he takes and plays in dirty areas. If we get the player he was last year after the surgery then it’s a disaster. I’d take the gamble on the trade.
Joshua to the Leafs
no idea if thats goodDon’t think this moves the needle much, wasn’t Laughton shaping up to be our 4C?
Edit: Actually, this might work out fairly well. If he can return to form from a few years ago, he can provide some depth scoring. Seems to me like the Leafs are moving away from being overly top heavy on the scoring side to spreading things out across four lines. He plays a physical game, no? Big boy for sure.
Note that Joshua missed all of training camp last year while he was recovering from surgery to remove a tumour. He’s a decent sized guy who likes to play physical and wins battles. This is the type of guy you want in your bottom-6. He’s not really moving the offensive needle much, even if he returns entirely to form – but he’s making the team harder to play against and I like that.
I forgot about Mermis. Of course it’s sort of easy to given that he’s 31 and has 78 career NHL games.
Obviously not sure, but I’m thinking depth-wise, the Leafs have
RHD
Tanev
Carlo
Ekman-Larsson
Myers
Benning <– almost forgot about him
RifaiLHD
Rielly
McCabe
Benoit
Thrun
Mermis
WebberOEL is not a RHD. He’s a LHD who plays on the right side. And poorly. He shouldn’t be on the right side except if it’s on the PP. The Leafs knew this which is why they signed Hak but that didn’t pan out.
The Leafs RHD situation, as always, is poor. Tanev is 35+ and on a Cup winner, he’s a great 2nd pair guy. But he’s not Seth Jones. Not even close. Carlo, when Boston was great, was on the 3rd pair. It’s a shame he plays such a timid game for his size because he could be a force if he played with snarl. But he doesn’t. It’s a big problem made even bigger with the fact that Rielly is a pylon defensively.
This Leafs blueline may have already peaked last year because it’s going to be very old and very bad, very soon with next to nothing in the pipeline to make that better. By time Danford is in the NHL full time, half the guys on our blueline will be retired or on Robidas Island.
Right. OEL is an LHD – and his best results were on the left-side. Benoit being left-handed and having his best results on the right-side is just one of those things.
In terms of Carlo – in 2022-23 the Boston Bruins had the 4th best points percentage of any team in NHL history. Carlo was principally paired with Lindholm in 2nd pair duties; he was very effective. That same pairing was the Bruins best pairing in the playoffs against Florida. He is a perfectly fine top-4 defenseman and has proven so on one of the best teams in over a century. His 5v5 ice time was lower than some of the other pairings but he led the team in penalty killing ice time so his distribution was affected that way.
You can’t really compare Jones to Carlo – they play entirely different roles. Jones had an effective playoff paired with Mikkola. Mikkola gave Jones freedom and he was good with that room – but don’t start thinking Jones is a defensive stalwart. He had a good couple of months playing beside a monster of a man who was allowed, because of the NHL playoffs, to commit a lot more infractions than would normally be tolerated. Jones did excel in his minutes and I won’t take that away from him, but in the regular season with Florida where the rules are just called normally, Jones was really mediocre – which is where he’s been for the past several seasons.
Carlo’s role is to provide a similar amount of freedom to his partner – who is unfortunately Rielly. I’ll agree that Carlo isn’t nasty enough but he uses size effectively down low and Rielly both didn’t do enough to make use of that freedom afforded to him nor did he do anything to contribute to the defensive requirements of his pairing. He had an awful and an awful second round against Florida.
That would be nice. At this point he looks like a guy who’ll compete with Myers and Mermis as a potential call up if someone gets hurt and who costs a bit less than Reeves to play with the Marlies
I forgot about Mermis. Of course it’s sort of easy to given that he’s 31 and has 78 career NHL games.
Obviously not sure, but I’m thinking depth-wise, the Leafs have
RHD
Tanev
Carlo
Ekman-Larsson
Myers
Benning <– almost forgot about him
RifaiLHD
Rielly
McCabe
Benoit
Thrun
Mermis
WebberI highly doubt he’s the next Benoit unless it’s in context of a guy nobody knew that turned out solid. He’s a puck moving defenseman that hasn’t been able to do that very effectively in the NHL yet.
He could be just a piece going elsewhere, in a bigger trade. All of this smoke about Karlsson coming over from Pittsburgh could be a prerequisite to a larger transaction. I’m not convinced that Karlsson is the answer. If he reverts to his Norris Trophy mode, then maybe. But he’s on the wrong side of 30, so I wouldn’t bet on this occurring.
I couldn’t imagine Karlsson being a solution here. His $10m salary isn’t manageable – even if you could move Rielly out, that’s a $2.5m increase on the blueline that should be allocated up front. Pittsburgh does have all of their retention slots but . . we don’t have the assets to pay them for a Karlsson or have them retain – at least not the 25% we’d want.
If you look at Karlsson’s impact to his team the last 3 years, it is beneficial to some degree – like Pittsburgh was -33 when he was off the ice last year and -5 with him; the year prior they were +6 with him and +1 without him. San Jose three years ago he was even at 5v5 while his team was -50. But he’s going into his age 36 season.
Still if you compare Karlsson relative impact to his teams over the past three years, he has had a positive impact (his GF% has been 48%, 52% and 50% over the past three years, while his teams without him on the ice have been 41%, 50% and 37%). Contrast that with Rielly and you have Rielly’s GF% of 51%, 54% and 51% compared to the team without him on the ice being 58%, 55% and 59%. It’s a pretty decent argument that Rielly’s contribution as a puck mover has not been beneficial for quite some time.
That being said – and it really should be noted because it’s important – when the important games come around, Rielly’s GF% in the playoffs has been 50%, 67% and 76% – compared to the team’s GF% without him being 48%, 42% and 30%. Entering his age 32 season, the diminishing results in the playoffs could be an age-related trend or just role-based. He’s still had a beneficial presence in the playoffs. Karlsson hasn’t seen the playoffs since 2019. The closest he’s seen anything was the 4 Nations Cup where he was 83% GF and his team was 43% without him (put simply, he was 5-1 GF/GA, and Sweden was 3-4 GF/GA when he was off the ice).
So while I wouldn’t strongly advocate to get Karlsson, I would actually say that he’d be an improvement over Rielly in the season and probably still an asset in the playoffs.
Which blog are we using on this site? Lol
I get what you’re saying tho senstroll, I know Marner is a superstar passer but I honestly don’t think a healthy Matthews needs one either. Give him a powerhouse net crasher which he has in Knies and a decent top six passer who isn’t an all star and Auston will be just fine.
Yup.
Mitch Marner is an elite puck distributor but he doesn’t create room – in fact he sort of causes lanes to get closed because defenders expect him to try and find a clean passing lane. Matthew Knies is on his way to becoming a top level space creator – he can use his physical size and strength to battle low which will often draw more than one defender to his vicinity. Matthews has shown his ability to get lost in the play – which all elite goal scorers do – he doesn’t need to be in the cross crease lane to get those passes; he’ll find a soft pocket. He has more in common with Brett Hull that way than he does with Ovechkin. If Maccelli can complete a pass – or even Domi – and Matthews is healthy again, they should be okay. They will miss Marner, but ideally not as much as some seem to think.
Finally saw someone post about this question I asked a while ago.
Marner is worth about 5-6 standings points roughly. career high 7.5, if you believe in Standing points measurements (like WAR)Matthews was way down last season (even with MM on the team)
AM having a bounce back season would make up most of that gap, alonethe response I expect is, AM will never get close to 60-70 goals without MM… and thats dumb.
I dont think he would score 60 again even with MM on the team, no player has 3, 60 goal seasons anymore
in the 50s I see that happeningWith a few more tweaks and maybe a nice tdl addition, the Leafs are no worse off come playoff time..imo
It’s sort of two-fold – there have been 6 times the 60 goal mark has been hit since salary cap was instituted (Stamkos, Ovechkin, McDavid, Pastrnak and Matthews x 2)- and only 43 times in all of hockey history by 23 players.
In the captain obvious column, there’s a correlation between goals scored in a season and the number of higher scorers – and scoring is still up. Like here’s a brief history of average goals / season in the nhl:
Now here’s a test:
(It says it supports BBCodes. it does not. Here’s a shitty unformatted table to replace the one I’d tried:)
Year Average Goals Leading Scorer
2024 247 52
2023 253 69
2022 258 64
2021 255 60
2020 237 41 ** Shortened by COVID to 56 games, this prorates to 60
2019 244 48 ** Shortened by COVID to 70 games, this prorates to 56
2018 244 51
2017 240 49
2016 223 44
2015 219 50
2014 218 53
2013 219 51It’s not always 1:1 but there’s a pretty strong correlation there between average team goals >250 and the league having a 50 goal scorer. Last year at 247 trended downwards, but the league’s best goalscorer trended downwards. If Matthews had an average season he probably bounces the league average up 1 all be himself. The league’s best player also struggled with his linemates a little and didn’t create a goal machine or be a goal machine either. My personal challenge with era-adjusted scoring is that it sort of ignores the rising tide raises all boats sort of thing – Gretzky and Lemieux alone drove scoring in the NHL. They weren’t a product of it they were a cause. Look at how league scoring drops when they were retired or aging. We see that now with McDavid, MacKinnon and Matthews driving up numbers across the board.
In conclusion, I think Matthews can do it again because he is that good at it and the league is still sustaining it.
